such a system of administering justice, would be no more false, absurd,
or atrocious, than that system of working by majorities, which seeks to
accomplish, by legislation, the same ends which, in the case supposed,
would be accomplished by judicial decisions.

Again, the doctrine that the minority ought to submit to the will of the
majority, proceeds, not upon the principle that government is formed by
voluntary association, and for an _agreed purpose_, on the part of all
who contribute to its support, but upon the presumption that all
government must be practically a state of war and plunder between
opposing parties; and that, in order to save blood, and prevent mutual
extermination, the parties come to an agreement that they will count
their respective numbers periodically, and the one party shall then be
permitted quietly to rule and plunder, (restrained only by their own
discretion,) and the other submit quietly to be ruled and plundered,
until the time of the next enumeration.

Such an agreement may possibly be wiser than unceasing and deadly
conflict; it nevertheless partakes too much of the ludicrous to deserve
to be seriously considered as an expedient for the maintenance of civil
society. It would certainly seem that mankind might agree upon a
cessation of hostilities, upon more rational and equitable terms than
that of unconditional submission on the part of the less numerous body.
Unconditional submission is usually the last act of one who confesses
himself subdued and enslaved. How any one ever came to imagine that
condition to be one of freedom, has never been explained. And as for the
system being adapted to the maintenance of justice among men, it is a
mystery that any human mind could ever have been visited with an
insanity wild enough to originate the idea.

If it be said that other corporations, than governments, surrender their
affairs into the hands of the majority, the answer is, that they allow
majorities to determine only trifling matters, that are in their nature
mere questions of discretion, and where there is no natural presumption
of justice or right on one side rather than the other. They _never_
surrender to the majority the power to dispose of, or, what is
practically the same thing, to _determine_, the _rights_ of any
individual member. The _rights_ of every member are determined by the
written compact, to which all the members have voluntarily agreed.

For example. A banking corporatio